Bureaucratic change in further education : impacts of the White Paper 'Training for Jobs' on non-advanced further education in England and Wales, 1984-89

• Main Author: Wicks, Peter John
• Published: London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London) 1990
• Subjects: 370; Education & training
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.311303

This thesis considers the impacts of legislation introduced by the British government in 1984 to restructure the administration of non-advanced further education (NAFE) in England and Wales. The White Paper Training for Jobs proposed to transfer a substantial proportion of responsibility for the delivery of NAFE away from local education authorities (LEAs) to the Manpower Services Commission (MSC), involving the transfer of a proportion of LEAs' block grant to the MSC's annual budget for the purposes of NAFE delivery. The thesis examines the impacts of the White Paper by recourse to three themes. First, the revision of the policy innovation as a consequence of resistance by local authorities and their national associations to the policy as framed, and the subsequent renegotiation of its terms. Second, the bureaucratic impacts of the policy change, principally the restructuring of local working relationships which it necessitated. Third, a consideration of its impacts upon local NAFE planning procedures, the target of the policy shift. Central to the thesis are the relative bureaucratic characteristic of, and the operational relationship between, the MSC and LEAs, and the effect of these upon the development and delivery of NAFE policy. These themes are set in the context of an historical overview of vocational education and training in England and Wales, and a theoretical perspective which considers Training for Jobs as an illustrative example of decision-making and policy implementation in practice. It presents evidence for the argument that these processes should be perceived as a continuum in which actors at all levels play a part in the policy process, rejecting more simplistic 'top-down' approaches to the issue.